Clueless Clergy

February 19, 2017 Leave a comment

mr_magooIt was a congregation of about 15 people in the assisted living dining hall turned sanctuary. I wasn’t the preacher, but was a member of the congregation, along with my wife, her three siblings, their mother (my mother-in-law), and the three other in-laws. Along with us nine, there were about six residents of the facility in attendance. Our family was with Mom, one of the residents, because her husband had passed away a couple of days earlier, and we had all gathered for the coming funeral.

The preacher was the pastor of the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church from nearby Hardwick, Minnesota. His wife played the piano as he led us in worship. The pastor was clueless to the fact that seven of the children and in-laws (excluding me) were musicians of one kind or another, all read music and sing in four-part harmony. To say the least, the family added a great deal to the congregational singing that Sunday afternoon, a virtual choir singing before the pastor as he stood behind the lectern. It was to his benefit that he was also clueless that there were two ordained ministers in the small congregation (me and my brother-in-law). I wouldn’t have wanted to know such a fact before the service if I were in his place.

He preached a great message. It was about having trust in God for this life and hope in heaven for the life to come. It was right on! Then, as an example, he said, “God is there for a wife who’s lost her husband and has four adult children who all live at a distance.” Okay, I thought, one of the family members must have had a conversation with him before the service and so he knew the circumstances of the extended family before him. I found out after the service that such was not the case! He was clueless, but he had nailed it with his example, not knowing that my mother-in-law had just lost her husband and that all four of her adult children lived at a distance! Amazing!

This experience was just another reminder to me that we pastors are often clueless as to how God is using our ministry. We pray about what we should preach and how best to minister, asking for God’s direction and help; then give it our best shot. We often wonder afterward if we hit the mark, if we’ve impacted people much at all. Sure, people sometimes say nice things but, really, did we make a difference?

It seems to me that we’re much like the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, only the opposite. Nearly blind Mr. Magoo meandered through his day oblivious to barely missing serious injury and death while leaving chaos and destruction behind him. We minister Magoos meander through our ministry and, by the grace of God, are often oblivious to the blessings God scatters in the path behind our pastoring. We are clueless clergy, and it’s by God’s design that we are!

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Our Heart’s Greatest Desire

September 20, 2016 Leave a comment

heart-in-woodIt’s important to have a heart for pastoral ministry, this being pretty much a no brainer. But I have a question for us: Is our heart captivated by the Lord’s work most of all or for the Lord Himself most of all?

I’ve been retired from pastoral ministry for almost two years. From my current perspective I can see that, at least at times, my greatest love was for the Lord’s work and not for the Lord Himself. The difference is crucial!

We can be passionate in our preaching, but is this passion in the preaching about Christ or in the Christ for whom we preach? It’s easy to confuse the two passions.

We can love unpacking the Word, but do we love The WORD who became flesh even more?

We can love shepherding the Lord’s flock, but do we love the Good Shepherd greater still?

We can love goal setting, but do we love looking to the Author and Finisher of our faith more yet?

We can love organizing, but do we have even a greater love for the One in whom “all things hold together?”  We do well to remember Jesus’ words to the church at Ephesus and make application to ourselves. “You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.” (Revelation 2:3-4) Yes, we too can persevere and endure in our work, but is that heart we pour into ministry overflowing with an even greater love for Christ?

Our first reason to love our ministry and the people to whom we minister should not be that we are called to this work. Our first reason to love our ministry should be that we are first profoundly loved by the Lord who calls us to the ministry! “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

My two years into retirement from pastoral ministry have been something like a time of fasting (actually, an ongoing fast). In fasting from food, or anything else, you come to realize how dependent you have been on that from which you’re fasting. Fasting also should prompt the heart to grow fonder for God. This is what I sense has been happening in my own life since retiring from pastoral ministry. I’ve realized in a fresh way my tendency to let the love of the pastoral work distract me from a deepening of my love relationship to the Lord.

God tells us we are to have no other gods before Him, and that includes making our pastoral ministry a god. Our very best objective should be to have our love for the Lord grow greater and greater, ever outpacing our love for doing His work!

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Speaking Softly and Carrying a Big Stick

November 21, 2015 Leave a comment

A photo I took directly outside our home here in Mexico of a shepherd taking his flock up the road.

A photo I took directly outside our home here in Mexico of a shepherd taking his flock up the road.

“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” was a phrase President Teddy Roosevelt used in a letter in 1900. It was in reference to a philosophy of foreign policy but has been used by many since then in all kinds of situations. From what I understand the meaning is that you should use as gentle and non-aggressive an approach as possible but also have available the power and authority to have your own way if the mild method doesn’t work.

I was a pastor in a Congregational church my entire pastoral career where the people have a major say in what happens, usually expressed by a vote, as to what they, or at least a majority of them, want for the church. I recall many a congregational meeting where I sat in the pew with most of the congregation, tense and anxiously waiting, as a few trusted souls were off in another room counting the paper ballots of the voting members on a crucial issue.

On such occasions, and others too, I found myself wishing I had more authority, more power, so that things would go the way I believed they should. Generally pastors can’t bark out orders; we’re supposed to use a softer, loving, gentler, what could be called a pastoral approach (an approach we know our congregation also is most comfortable with), but the fantasy of being able to carry a big stick (perhaps a cub?) was, nevertheless, often present for me. That’s the fantasy, but the fact is, I know that’s not the way to pastor!

Oh, we pastors are called to carry a big stick, but not a club, rather a staff, the shepherd’s crook. It’s not a stick to clobber people but one to care for people. Sure, sometimes the shepherd flipped it end for end and used the straight end for a club, a rod, but not on the sheep. Used as a rod it was a defensive weapon against the enemies of the flock under his care.

It seems to me that whenever we pastors start thinking about our power, how to guarantee that we have a significant amount of it or lament that we don’t have enough of it, we’re experiencing pastoral slippage, a drifting from our calling.

The people of the church don’t want to see their pastor as being manipulative. Besides, they can easily vote against being manipulated! The people of the church want to trust their pastor, and my experience is that they’re most open to change when the level of trust and a sense of safety is greater than the perceived risks of change. This level of trust and sense of safety ultimately comes from the pastor and, even more specifically, from the pastor’s heart.

That shepherd of sheep and greatest king of Israel, David, penned these poetic words, referring to the Lord as his shepherd, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” The “stick” we carry as an under-shepherd of the Great Shepherd is to bring comfort.

As pastors we must guard our hearts from being power hungry. After all, we’re not manipulators but ministers. Yes, we’re to speak softly and carry a big stick, but that big stick is to be the shepherd’s staff!

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Eggs and Baskets

November 3, 2015 Leave a comment

eggsbasketsSmallI frequently combine my two interests of photography and writing devotional literature in what I call photovotionals, a photograph of mine upon which I base a devotional thought. Pictured here are two baskets, each containing eggs. It illustrates the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

As a grandfather if I wanted to have the help of a grandchild in carrying a dozen eggs I’d enlist the help of two grandchildren and let each carry half of them. I’d have a better chance of enjoying eggs for breakfast; the chances of both children dropping the eggs seems a better risk than letting one child carry them all. I suspect this is the principle behind the practice of the president and vice-president of the United States never flying on the same plane.

A good financial policy is to have a diversified portfolio. If one company or one industry falls on hard times you’re not going to be ruined financially.

It seems to me that the principle of not putting all of our eggs in one basket also applies to those of us in pastoral ministry. Having retired in my 40th year of ministry at one church I can now see, with something close to 20/20 hindsight, that I’m glad I didn’t put all my eggs in the basket of being a pastor. God has blessed me with a great many interests. Throughout my pastoral ministry I also had an active writing ministry. No, I’m not a best selling author, but I wrote a weekly inspirational newspaper column for my hometown paper and a local paper in the area where I served as pastor. Along with my flock of people at the church I served I also enjoyed the hobby of raising a small flock of chickens. I also enjoyed photography, maintaining a decorative fish pond, and ventriloquism.

So much of pastoral ministry seems to be out of our control, and so I found some solace in spending some time in other things over which I felt I could have more control. Although it’s hard to lead a flock of chickens! It’s not that they have their own minds, it’s that they don’t have minds…OK, very tiny ones. I could take the pictures I wanted to, and when it comes to ventriloquism my vent figure Ricky only said what I wanted him to say!

If we as pastors put all of our focus, all of our energy, all of our identity in being a pastor, then we’re setting ourselves up for a devastating experience. We should put our emotional eggs in more than one basket, into many baskets. The Lord Himself should be the biggest basket of all, having a relationship with Him apart from ministering for Him and with Him. If we’re married and have a family we have two more baskets that we should be filling. I believe it’s very good for a pastor to have a sideline ministry; writing was mine. For some pastors the outside ministry might be as a chaplain for a hospital, police force, fire department, nursing home, or as military chaplain as is the case with my successor at the church I served. We tell our congregation that they can minister in many different ways; we can model that for them.

If the basket of pastoral ministry is the only basket into which we put our emotional eggs we can easily end up a basket case! I have found the old adage to be true: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

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My Feet, His Arms

August 14, 2012 Leave a comment

I’m reading a new book on my Kindle. Found this quote helpful to my soul.

“Come then…let us be resigned to our frailty and dependence on God, who would never reduce us to being unable to walk on our own feet if he had not the mercy to carry us in his arms.”

The Contented Soul by Lisa Graham McMinn

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An Old Prayer for Today

August 8, 2012 3 Comments

Here’s a portion of a prayer from The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal. Scougal was born in 1650, exactly 300 years before me! I came across him when reading John Piper, who wrote that Scougal had a profound influence on him. I ordered Scougal’s book (you’d never find it on the shelf at a local bookstore). Come to find out Susanna Wesley was highly influenced by Scougal and commended him to her two sons. Whitefield also was impacted by him. And to think I had never heard of him. OK, so here’s the portion of a prayer of his I promised.

“O God, grant that the consideration of what thou art, and what we ourselves are, may both humble and lay us low before thee and also stir up in us the strongest and most ardent aspirations towards thee! We desire to resign and give up ourselves to the conduct of thy Holy Spirit… Amen” (p. 95)

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The Right Preposition for Pastors, and Everyone Else Too

August 3, 2012 1 Comment

Christianity Today magazine recently listed the best books for the leader’s inner life. With, Reimaging the Way You Relate to God by Skye Jethani was on that short list. I read a majority of the book while on a three day study leave at a Trappist monastery in Iowa. What a great book with which to have retreated! It’s at the top of my list of books that have impacted my walk with Christ and my ministry. Jethani creatively uses five prepositions to explain the different ways we position ourselves with God, four that aren’t good as the ultimate positions from which to relate to God and one that is.

In one place Jethani summarizes by stating that “…when God desired to restore his broken relationship with people, he sent his Son to dwell with us. His plan to restore his creation was not to send a list of rules and rituals to follow (LIFE UNDER GOD), nor was it the implementation of useful principles (LIFE OVER GOD). He did not send a genie to grant us our desires (LIFE FROM GOD), nor did he give us a task to accomplish (LIFE FOR GOD). Instead God himself came to be with us – to walk with us once again as he had done in Eden in the beginning.” (1402, location in e-book)

As Jethani explains it LIFE UNDER GOD is when I fear I’ve not been good enough or done well enough to be the recipient of God’s blessings, either for myself or for my church. I’m always wondering if I’m measuring up, and I never do. If, for some strange reason, I think I’m doing quite well with God, then I begin to believe God owes me, and I’m disappointed or angry when God doesn’t bless as I think He should.

I see myself living LIFE OVER GOD when I believe that if I do things right that God will bless. If I lead my church toward being a church that exhibits the Biblical church growth principles of a what church should be then I can expect it to be a growing and thriving church, guaranteed! I use His Word as a manual on how to do things right.

When I’m living from the perspective of LIFE FROM GOD I’m operating under the assumption that if I just have enough faith then God will bless the way I imagine He should. If I believe that God is really a big God then I’m going to see really big results, every time.

LIFE FOR GOD is the perspective, I believe, that sincere disciples of Jesus focus on most, including sincere pastors. We want to serve God, to carry out His purposes for us. Obedience is good, but it easily becomes something of a duty, even a drudgery.

All of these four perspectives have some elements of truth to them, they just make for a lousy ultimate perspective. Our ultimate perspective is to be LIFE WITH GOD. The goals of the other perspectives are to, in some way, use God, that God is a means to an end. LIFE WITH GOD makes God Himself the goal!

It’s painful for me to reflect on how frequently I’ve focused on the four less-than-ideal positions in my own walk with Christ and how often I’ve sought to move my parishoners into one or more of these positions. I’ve renewed my commitment to have a LIFE WITH GOD. Everything else falls into its proper place when I live from this perspective.

If I could recommend one book I’ve read in the last couple of years this would be it. More than anything else, more than any other perspective from which I could live, I want to live a LIFE WITH GOD! Jethani’s book reminded me of that.

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The Danger of Being in the Middle of Ministry

June 19, 2012 Leave a comment

Beginning and ending are the easy parts. It’s slogging through the middle that gets us every time.

When I start a project, whether an up-and-coming event at the church, a writing project, or a home improvement project, it’s usually exciting. When you start something you have high hopes and big dreams.

The ending can be fairly easy as well. After all, you’re near the end! Like a person or a horse running the race you can pour it on. You’re just about done, what you’ve been planning for and working for is just about here. There’s the energy that comes from being almost done.

It’s that middle that gets us most of the time. We’ve lost the excitement of starting and we’re not close enough to the end to feed off the excitement of having it conclude. We’re in the no man’s land of the middle. The ancients called it the “noonday demon.” One of the seven deadly sins, sloth, often comes to visit us when we’re in the middle of things. We’re at dead center and we feel dead!

Those of us who are pastors find ourselves in the middle of ministry for a long time, for the middle is much bigger than either the beginning or ending. The middle of ministry is extra challenging when results aren’t forthcoming as we had expected in the beginning when optimism fueled our efforts. The hope to hear the Lord’s “well done” seems a long way off.

I have been pastoring the same church for nearly 37 years and have said on several occasions that I pastor one of the slowest growing churches in the country!  I’ve often struggled with my feelings and attitude as I’ve experienced what I think are less than stellar results for my efforts.  “When are things going to really start happening?” I wonder.

Over the years I’ve not identified any quick fix for ministering well in the middle, just the faithful affirmation and application of some key principles I preach on regularly for the Lord’s people that I need to take seriously myself! First, I’m called to be faithful, not “successful” as the world defines success, or how even I or my peers are often tempted to define success. Second, I need to focus on that which I love about ministry and not fixate on that which isn’t the way I’d like it to be in ministry. Third, my identity is not in what I do but in who I am, who I am in Christ. Fourth, embrace the day by giving thanks for today’s manna of sustenance from the Lord and the other blessings I can identify while doing the tasks He’s assigned for me, just for today.

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My Main Job at The Church

April 18, 2012 Leave a comment

John Ortberg, pastor of Menlo Park Church in Menlo Park, California, wrote a good article in Leadership Magazine, Summer 2011. Here’s a brief reference in the article that struck a chord with me.

“Last fall I asked a friend, ‘What’s the main thing I need to be doing for our church to be a place where lives are being transformed?’ He said, ‘Your primary job is to experience deep contentment and joy and confidence in your everyday life with God.’

Now I have that on a sign that hangs above the door of my office. It reminds me, before I write sermons or lead meetings or do planning, that my main job at the church is to live in deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday walk with God.”

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Let’s Talk!

March 28, 2012 1 Comment

I read a promotion for an author’s material in which he said, “After 25 years in ministry, traveling to 32 countries, and preaching to folks in every conceivable setting and denomination…” He then proceeded to give some advice to preachers and a way to get some materials of his, some of which, to his credit, were free.

More book jacket info about the author than I can count touts how he/she has sold so many thousands of books. Other book jackets tell of how large a weekend attendance at worship the author has as a pastor.

I’m wondering what any of this has to do with giving credibility to what the author has to say. Do the number of miles traveled, the volume of books sold, or the size of an audience expand our understanding or deepen our faith? It’s possible, but it’s also possible that staying in one place, writing to one person at a time in an e-mail or letter, and sharing in a small group could expand our understanding and deepen our faith.

So what about the author of this blog, A Pastor’s Heart? You’re probably asking yourself, Who is this guy, Dave Claassen? I suspect you’ll Google my name. I’ll save you some time and tell you that I don’t get invited to travel great distances to speak. I’ve done some writing but I don’t have a best-selling book. I speak every weekend in my church but it’s not to thousands of people.

What credentials do I have for writing a blog called A Pastor’s Heart? My credentials are my calling to be a pastor and for having been given a heart for pastoring a flock of his people. My goal in this blog is not to impart some great wisdom and insight but to share the journey I’ve been on as a pastor in the one church I’ve served for 36 years. In other words, I’ll be sharing something of my spiritual pilgrimage.

If you’re a pastor then you have been given a heart for pastoring and you have the credentials to contribute to the dialogue in this gathering place I’ve named A Pastor’s Heart. I hope we hear from Rev. I. M. Average who’s serving The Third Church of Ordinary located in Timbuktu. I hope we hear from you too!

What’s on your heart and mind? Join the conversation!

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